Crazy Ideas
We get a lot of ideas and some of them even turn out to be valuable and/or useful. However, the vast majority sound interesting from a superficial standpoint, but we lack the time, money, or energy to do the investigation required to see if they would hold up in the real world.
We used to guard our crazy ideas for fear someone else would profit from them. However, it has become increasingly obvious that ideas, even well thought out ones, are cheap. The cost is the time, energy and money needed to actually bring a product to market. Elsewhere on the web we describe ourselves as driven by curiosity but there we try to keep things somewhat less speculative. So, I expect this will be a "just for fun" place to talk about some things that don't fit anywhere else.
Lots of these ideas gradually develop over a period of time. For example, Print on Demand is gradually disrupting the Publishing world. Book publishers are used to having a lot of power over authors. They frequently control the title, the advertising, the cover art, the sales price, etc. They are also used to long lead times. For example, I was shocked to learn that for a book to be sold as a Christmas item it needs to be printed and ready for sale by July. That's crazy in this day of electronic publishing.
There are guys doing web seminars on how to get your books published in less than 24 hours. Even better, there is no cost to the author until something actually sells. As in past cases of business model destruction, the established players are having a real hard time coming to grips with the changes.
Lately we have been watching developments in the video publishing sector. You can buy a video camera for $200 with quality adequate for use on the web. The memory is re-usable so, unlike film, it is cheap. Web site hosting is very cheap (Think Amazon S3). In other words there is a lot of opportunity for low budget video publishing. Of course that leads to a lot of junk. A brief trip to YouTube will show that. But, amongst all the dreck is some good stuff. We plan to see if we can preview YouTube videos looking for home improvement tips and adapt those repair and renovation ideas for use by mobile and manufactured home owners. Mobile home repair and renovation is a very under served market and we know this kind of information would be welcome.
We used to guard our crazy ideas for fear someone else would profit from them. However, it has become increasingly obvious that ideas, even well thought out ones, are cheap. The cost is the time, energy and money needed to actually bring a product to market. Elsewhere on the web we describe ourselves as driven by curiosity but there we try to keep things somewhat less speculative. So, I expect this will be a "just for fun" place to talk about some things that don't fit anywhere else.
Lots of these ideas gradually develop over a period of time. For example, Print on Demand is gradually disrupting the Publishing world. Book publishers are used to having a lot of power over authors. They frequently control the title, the advertising, the cover art, the sales price, etc. They are also used to long lead times. For example, I was shocked to learn that for a book to be sold as a Christmas item it needs to be printed and ready for sale by July. That's crazy in this day of electronic publishing.
There are guys doing web seminars on how to get your books published in less than 24 hours. Even better, there is no cost to the author until something actually sells. As in past cases of business model destruction, the established players are having a real hard time coming to grips with the changes.
Lately we have been watching developments in the video publishing sector. You can buy a video camera for $200 with quality adequate for use on the web. The memory is re-usable so, unlike film, it is cheap. Web site hosting is very cheap (Think Amazon S3). In other words there is a lot of opportunity for low budget video publishing. Of course that leads to a lot of junk. A brief trip to YouTube will show that. But, amongst all the dreck is some good stuff. We plan to see if we can preview YouTube videos looking for home improvement tips and adapt those repair and renovation ideas for use by mobile and manufactured home owners. Mobile home repair and renovation is a very under served market and we know this kind of information would be welcome.
